


Rust and Stardust

by Sygur



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 22:28:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17610212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sygur/pseuds/Sygur
Summary: A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?' Pointless, really. "Do the stars gaze back?" Now that is the real question.





	Rust and Stardust

**Author's Note:**

> Now bear with me here, because you won't see the any main characters for the first couple of chapters, which I'm doing only to establish and build up character personality and backstory. But trust and believe I will be introducing them soon. This is my first official fanfiction on this site, constructive criticism is appreciated. I hope to do the Fairy Tail series justice with this story and provide how I think things should have played out and give the side characters a purpose other than just existing for plot and such. As the story progresses I will add characters relevant to the story, but I won't do so right now as to not spoil much.

She couldn’t exactly remember the series of events that led up to her death but could only seem to recall the fact that she had died.

And she was confused. 

She could remember what she ate that day, remember what color underwear she wore, but couldn’t recall how she even ended up drowning in the first place. One second she was safely on the sands of the shore, and the next, she was 6 feet under the crashing waves. It was like a jump cut in her memory, and no matter how hard she thought, she could not recall how she ended up in that scenario. 

She does remember, however, that in the few seconds leading up to her death, the ocean was the prettiest color blue she had seen.

She’s quite sure she hasn’t been dead for too long, however with no way of telling time she wasn’t too sure. She tried to rationalize, tried to figure out where the hell she was, only to find that she couldn't. 

All that came to mind was _nothing_ , and whatever this nothing was, it felt suffocating to her, covering the entire expanse of her vision and leaving no room for anything else. She felt the weight of this nothing softly pressing against her skin, though over time (she couldn’t really tell how much time had passed. her internal clock was practically nonexistent now) she now felt the emptiness of nothing biting into her flesh but leaving no marks. 

At first, she was afraid of this cold nothing that surrounded her; it left her completely alone to her thoughts. And then the silence. It was like a constant white noise in her ears, a never-ending reminder of the fact that she was dead for real. It wasn’t until it settled into her mind that she was really, truely, dead that she started crying.

She wasn’t overly religious, though she did believe in some higher universal being having some, part to play in the big span of things. Now, she couldn’t help but think that of all the people in the world, why did she have to go and be the one to die today? It was selfish, she was well aware, but she didn’t have it in herself to care all too much; she died before she could even grow and develop herself as a person.

She had so many things she had wanted to do, that she had wanted to say. Things she could no longer do now that she was dead. 

And that was scary, because what would she do now? She had nothing left, nothing to do, nothing to look forward to. She was alone, and she wasn’t busy, and her mind raced to find the answer to what she could have done to end up where she is now. 

Though it was this same loneliness that she eventually came to find solitude in. She stopped crying, chastising herself for being unproductive, and from then on she didn’t cry again. She didn’t panic, but rather she accepted things for what they were because that’s the type of person she was.

Sure, she had regrets, but there was nothing she could do about them now. She wasn’t the type of person to hold grudges in the first place. She preferred to go wherever life takes her, and if this was the place for her, she accepted that. 

The thought of being alone now sounded very appealing. Just her and silence for eternity, the ultimate power couple. No rules, no risks, no people, no anxiety, no pressure, no tests, no expectations. 

_Nothing._

And then ironically enough, there was _something._

She felt, rather than heard, something pop into existence beside her, a presence feeling like a pull on her senses.

A man appeared from the emptiness, well, at least she assumed. She couldn’t really tell with the dark cloak covering every feature of the thing. It turned towards her, but she couldn’t see the face no matter how hard she squinted. 

Where it’s face should be, it was fuzzy. And she didn’t mean fuzzy as in hairy, but rather fuzzy as in blurry, like she was looking at it with her eyes almost closed to the point where it’s the whole face was just one big blur.

It was in those few minutes of her staring at the unknown thing that she suddenly felt off. She felt as if she had known the thing her whole life as if they were best friends. No, not a thing, _him._

This _thing_ was Death, and she should be afraid of him, but for the life (or rather death) of her, she couldn’t muster it in herself to be afraid. Why should she be? She was already dead. She was more curious over what he wanted because surely he was here for a reason. So she waited for him to speak, or to do anything really.

She stared at Death. Death stared right back at her.

“Genesis Faith Robinson.” Death spoke her name in a drawn-out sigh like she was a child who had done something wrong. It didn’t sit right with her, that tone coming from him. “You are here early.”

In her former life, she was not known to hold her tongue in any situation and the fact that she had gone to attack his appearance rather than question what he meant by “early” spoke volumes to Death. He was old, much older than time itself, and with his age came the ability to pick up on the body language that humans had. He was required to know everything about whoever he was aiding so that he can properly place judgment on their character. It was his job to know these things, so it really was no surprise to him that her attitude had not changed in the slightest.

“I didn’t expect the reaper himself to be so cliche.” She side eyed Death, nose scrunched up in her obvious distaste. Another thing he was quite used to. He was familiar with being associated with the word common, or bland, or more often than not, scary. He could care less for the opinions of the sheep he is responsible for guiding. And even if he didn’t care, it did happen to irritate him every other time it happened, and he criticizes himself for it because he should be past being vexed by minor inconveniences. He disliked being reminded of his past mortality.

“Well, my form varies based on the expectations of different individuals.” He was brusque in his short response, but she read between the lines and was able to pick up on what he was obliquely saying. Before she could spew another roundabout insult, he started speaking again. “But it is not of importance. On June 21st, 2076 at precisely 12 hours, 45 minutes, and 32 seconds into the day, you were scheduled to die by the hands of the human individual known as James Charles Lee, via asphyxiation. Instead, you are have decided to choose your own path and as a result, you are here early.”

That got her thinking, what exactly did he mean by deciding her own path? She couldn’t even remember why or how she ended up drowning anyway. “Where am I?” She finally asked, and a part of herself was afraid of the answer.

“Ah,” Death said, idly scratching his at the top of his hood. She half expected his hands to be made up of bone, but to her surprise, they looked much like her own; flesh covered, though marked by various tattooed religious symbols and other markings she didn’t know. She noted that he was a lot more human than she expected him to be. “You’re dead. But worry not, everything is fine.”

“What?” she asked, and immediately mentally scolded herself. She had already known she was dead, but to have another being confirm it twisted her stomach into knots. She felt...sick, and it left her jittery and nervous.

“There’s nothing you can do about it now. You weren’t particularly old by your species standards, and you haven’t been ill.” His voice was notably soft-spoken, though she clearly picked up on the condescending undertones. He made it sound as if she were being ungrateful for her life, which was true. During her lengthy meditation period between her death and now, she had enough time to dwell on her uneventful life and came to terms with its ordinariness.

“So…” she began, mind racing and heart heavy. “Do I get wings or something?”

“No.” Death said. “Now I do my job.” 

She blinked, and the vast emptiness she had just began to familiarize herself with faded away into scenes from her life, not in any definitive order. Her graduation, having smores for the first time, the days she spent wondering about her purpose in life, the death of her mother, the birth of her nephew, her first day of kindergarten, her first time out of the country, the day she lost her father and nearly her own life as well in a car accident all because he wouldn’t listen to her when she said that the roads were too dangerous and _if only he would just listen to her for once-_

“So,” Death began slowly from the same spot a fair distance away from her. “What did you learn? What was the meaning of your life?”

“I don’t know.” She didn’t like not knowing things, and she hated admitting she didn't know something even more so. “I just...kept living, kept moving forward. I had to deal with a lot of different things at once, I couldn’t focus on the bigger picture.”

“But you had time to. You had plenty of time.” And he was right, she had her whole life to figure out her purpose. But she hadn’t. Twenty-six years of her life, all meaningless at this exact moment. “But there is no need to lament. You’re very lucky, Genesis, awfully lucky indeed.”

“What do you mean?” She didn't think of herself as all too lucky, seeing as she was very much dead. Then he moved, and whatever human image she had seen in him was gone. He approached like a panther would, grace and power shown in his abnormally wide stride. Death was upon her in a matter of seconds, and now that he was, she realized that he was much taller than her. She was sure that from an outside perspective, it was almost comical how much smaller she was, but now the only thought she had was how cold she had gotten. 

Her vision blurred, a deafening static making her clutch her ears. After being without pain so long, to suddenly feel it again felt foreign to her. A strong sense of _wrongness_ made her queasy, doubling over to clutch at her stomach. She tried to speak, to ask the entity before her what he thought he was doing, only to find that she couldn’t speak at all. She was frozen, completely incapable of moving away from the tattooed hands that reached for her.

Death grabbed the sides of her face and directing her attention upwards. She stopped breathing, afraid that if she even tried to take in a breath she wouldn’t be able to see his face anymore. Death was surprisingly young in appearance, his skin not even pale but straight up gray and he had eyes that reminded her of mint, _so bright and pure and-_

“You will awaken from death.” Death said, and her eyes were drawn to the bizarre marking on his face and the various piercings and _why the hell was he so attractive?_ She was entirely speechless, much to Death’s apparent amusement (the way his lip curled upwards around one the lip piercings had her internally swooning). He was so close, she could count each eyelash outlining his outlandishly green eyes, could feel his cold breath upon her face. “And you will return to life. This is goodbye, Genesis. Until we meet again.”

And then Death kneeled down to her height, and he kissed her.


End file.
